


Worries

by Monochromely



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22301653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monochromely/pseuds/Monochromely
Summary: After the events of "The Hike," Moira sits Johnny down for a talk in the motel room.
Relationships: Johnny Rose/Moira Rose
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	Worries

**Author's Note:**

> Over the Christmas break, I binged the entirety of _Schitt's Creek_ and fell so much in love with Johnny and Moira that I wanted to write fanfiction for the first time in a year, so here we are. :')

His hair still dripping with the vestiges of his shower, Johnny Rose, clad in his favorite white bathrobe, re-enters the motel room to a familiar trifecta awaiting him on his bed: Moira Rose, her carefully arched brow, and her well-manicured hand placed on the comforter in such a way that her implicit demand is all but spoken: _Come here._

“Am I in trouble, Mrs. Rose?” He asks wryly, obediently shuffling to her side. His back is still somewhat stiff from sitting in a waiting room one half of the day and a wheelchair the other, so he’s a little awkward as he lowers himself next to her, trying not to bend in an unpleasant way.

If his wife notices—and he _knows_ that she notices—she only responds with a slight dip in her expression, subtle, but unmistakable for what it is: concern.

Care.

Love.

Sometimes, it positively breaks his heart—how tender his dearest can be.

“Do _not_ am I in trouble me, Mr. Rose,” Moira scolds even as she immediately snakes her arm around his own. “You know the answer to _that_ tonight unless those lovely little pills that the physician prescribed have already affected your presence of mind.”

Instinctively, quite waggishly, he raises a bushy brow.

“You’ve seen me in an altered state before, Moira.”

“A time or twenty nine, yes, of course. You become delightfully Shakespearean with your wordplay; it is irresistibly attractive.”

“So,” he finishes, a gentle smile on his lips, “given that I’m not regaling you with new vocabulary, you know I’m perfectly _here_ right now.”

Here in mind.

Here in body.

Here in soul.

Here with her for another tomorrow and another and another in the confoundingly, paradoxically beautiful Schitt’s Creek.

Moira’s gaze softens, melting in all of her skeptical places, and very slowly, very carefully, she leans her head against his shoulder. The familiar scent of her wreathes him—something floral but indescribable, as though she has just stepped out of an exotic Parisian greenhouse. It is the sweetest perfume he has ever known.

“I know that, John, dear,” she sighs heavily. “I do. I _do_. I was simply... I mean, I suppose I was just _besides_ myself today under the duress of possibly losing you.” Her plump lips tremble in the way he knows she’s trying her best not to cry. “You were so pale and so drawn and so terribly _small_ , and the last time I saw you possessing any of these qualities in spades was when I was giving birth to Alexis.”

“Funny. I don’t recall you being lucid enough to recall Alexis’s birth.”

“ _John_!” Lifting her head from his shoulder, Moira bats his arm indignantly. “I am not being a wisecrack.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles as she leans against him again. As a peace offering, he briefly presses his lips against her forehead, and in return, one of her hands reaches over to his right wrist, which is still encircled with the patient bracelet from Elmdale Hospital.

She twists it counterclockwise so that she can better view his name. He had forgotten to cut it off before taking a shower.

“ _Moira_ ”—he glances down at the tiny, printed number which marks him as seventy-three years old—“I’m fine now. You know that, right?”

That piercing blue gaze of hers moves from the bracelet to his own eyes, and it is clear that she is searching him for the veracity of his words—though he imagines that she won’t be able to find the fault that her paranoia tends to dread.

Lying to her has never been his desire nor forte.

“I know that,” she concedes with a tentative smile. “I simply adore you, sweetheart— _endlessly_ —and so when it comes to you, my worries work ahead of my sensibilities. My head, prodigious though it normally is, lags behind my heart, my fears, and all of these _feelings_ in my chest.”

“Is there any way I can assuage those worries, dear?”

“I have a list approximately thirty-two items long.”

Johnny reflexively laughs, and his wife reflexively bats him again, but the parentheses framing her eyes are wrinkled in the beginnings of amusement all the same.

“Start with your first five,” he replies, “and then we’ll go from there.”

It’s all the invitation that she needs.

“One”—by this point, Moira has worked her thumb beneath his bracelet, lifting it off of his wrist with a disdainful expression—“you go into the bathroom as soon as we are done conversing and cut this dreadful reminder of our past loose from your life! It is ugly and unbefitting, and I much prefer your Rolex.”

She withdraws her thumb from his wrist in the same moment that he nods amicably.

“I can do that. Hospital bracelets are so out of vogue anyway.”

She smiles at him, eyes twinkling.

“ _Deuxième_ , dearest, you must assure me that you will strictly follow the physician's orders to scale back on potentially inflammatory food items. No more cinnamon rolls _every_ morning or late night runs to the café for a milkshake.”

“I’ve never gone on—“ He starts indignantly (and guiltily), but he’s just as immediately cut off.

“Shush!” She places her index finger on his lips. “I _know_ you haven’t been going to the apothecary for lip balm once a week. Your lips are perfectly, delectably moist, and David would have already complained about your constant presence in the store were your insinuations true.”

Another reason he doesn’t lie to Moira Rose.

She unfailingly sniffs him out when he does.

“Fine, fine,” he sighs placatingly. “No more milkshake runs.”

“Or daily cinnamon rolls,” she says pointedly.

“Or daily cinnamon rolls,” he parrots back with an eye roll. And now it’s Moira’s turn to laugh in that rich, throaty way of hers; she squeezes his hand warmly, and without thinking, he squeezes back.

“ _Tres_ , you must tell me that you love me at _least_ three times a day from this point onwards, so that if you do suddenly kick the proverbial bucket after sampling Twyla’s meatloaf special one day, I can always reflect to our children, friends, and sundry admirers that the last thing that you told me was that you loved me.”

Johnny stares at her incredulously.

“Aren’t you being just a _little_ facetious now?”

And, because Moira Rose can give an incredulous look just as well as she can receive one, she offers one right back.

“Hardly not, John! I am just covering all of our necessary bases in the advent of your untimely demise.”

“Thanks,” he mutters.

“You are very welcome!”

She either _didn’t_ catch the sarcasm or absolutely _did_ and is actively choosing to ignore it—he isn't sure which of the two options is worse.

“ _Quattuor_ ,” she murmurs next, and this time, Johnny can detect a new seriousness in his wife’s voice. She skims her thumb up and down the length of his gnarled hand and avoids looking him in the eye. “And this one is important, Mr. Rose, so please pay me the utmost attention... but I would desire it very much if you would be vigilant about informing me of your— _ah_ —conditions from now on.”

She glances at him then, her expression uncharacteristically, _alarmingly_ bashful.

“Honey...” He tries, but she brings her head off his shoulder to shake it sadly.

“You were lifting paraphernalia for _me_ this morning when you strained yourself, and you said nary a word until you almost passed out on the dirty floor.” Moira’s thick lashes flutter with a rapidity that isn’t quite natural, and when she looks away, she swipes what he knows she _imagines_ to be a surreptitious hand across her eyes. “I cannot name the emotion that such a sequence of events made me feel because my former therapist, Dr. London Aubergine, advised me to refrain from giving my negative emotions a voice... but, John, I—“

She stops suddenly, her breath hitching, but Johnny doesn’t need to hear another word to understand the gist of what she is saying. With a slow deliberation that is a message in and of itself, he gently cups his hand against Moira’s cheek to command her attention, and, with the faintest of sighs, she leans into his touch.

“There, there, sweetheart,” he says. “If it wasn’t moving all the furniture today, maybe it would have been cleaning the windows tomorrow or changing sheets the day after that. What happened today—and _again_ , let me remind you that I’m okay now—wasn’t _your_ fault.”

“As if _you_ would tell me if it were, though!” She whines accusingly, tilting her head away from his hand.

The sudden recoil gives him whiplash; he instantly misses the warmth of her cheek against his palm.

“I don’t like for you to have to worry!”

“But, John, I _want_ to worry for you. Nay, I demand the right to worry for you!” Her fingernails, sharp and black, fortified by acrylic and long, are beginning to dig into the hand that she is holding. “I love you beyond reason, and I know that can occasionally be overwhelming—goodness knows I can overreact—but I would rather _overreact_ than _understate_ you in a potential crisis. So, please, if you want to regard my feelings, tell me your truth and nothing _but_ your truth.”

Moira takes a deep breath, but her grip on him doesn’t quite relax in the same way.

“I am a nine times shortlisted Daytime Emmy candidate, Mr. Rose." She draws herself to full height where she sits, her shoulders regally postured. "I can handle it—I assure you.”

It's hard to argue with her when she puts it like _that_ in exactly those terms.

His dark eyes crinkle.

“C’mere,” Johnny says, finally extracting his hand from hers so he can pull her into a fuller embrace. He wraps his arms around her back, all tenderness, as she rest her chin in the crook of his neck. He can feel the tattoo of her heart beating rhythmically next to his chest, each thud an elegant melody he doesn't mind hearing again and again. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel this way, Moira. I’ve just never had much practice with, well, talking about my problems at great length. I can be prideful like that, you know—stubborn.”

“Oh, I know _that_ —trust me, dear. You are fifty percent of the children’s psychological complexes.”

Though he knows she can’t see it, he levels her a dirty look.

“Who’s being the wisecrack now?”

“Sorry, darling! Force of habit.”

“But... seriously, Moira,” he continues, beginning to rub circles into the back of her pajama vest, “I’ll do better on that—on telling you things, okay?”  
  
A pause.

A beat.

Her heart continues to beat, and his does, too, the _smallest_ reminders of their shared vivacity.

“Okay,” she breathes back, the low affirmation tickling his ear. He doesn’t have enough time to process how that makes him feel before she disentangles herself from him once again, a small smile pressed upon her lips.

“And now, a hearty Italian _cinque_ to finish us off. For my fifth item, John, I would like you to kiss me now as though we have never kissed before, but also as though we have been kissing all of our lives.” She raises a suggestive brow. “It is a fine line between these polarized extremes. Are you up for the challenge?”

With a loud laugh, he does not quite respond to this particular inquiry with words.


End file.
